Classical Poem of the Month

April 2013:

NEVER TOO LATE

“It is too late!” Ah, nothing is too late –

Cato learned Greek at eighty;  Sophocles

Wrote his grand “Oedipus,” and Simonides

Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers

When each had numbered more than fourscore years;

And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,

Had begun his “Characters of Men.”

Chaucer, at Woodstock, with his nightingales,

At sixty wrote the “Canterbury Tales.”

Goethe, at Weimar, toiling to the last,

Completed “Faust” when eighty years were past.

What then? Shall we sit idly down and say,

“The night has come; it is no longer day”?

For age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress.

And as the evening twilight fades away,

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

                                    

                                                       ~    William Wadsworth Longfellow

August 2012:

A Wall

 O the old wall here! How I could pass
Life in a long midsummer day,
My feet confined to a plot of grass,
My eyes from a wall not once away!

And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe
Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:
Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loath,
In lappets of tangle they laugh between.

Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?
Why tremble the sprays? What life o'erbrims
The body,--the house no eye can probe,--
Divined, as beneath a robe, the limbs?

And there again! But my heart may guess
Who tripped behind; and she sang, perhaps:
So the old wall throbbed, and its life's excess
Died out and away in the leafy wraps.

Wall upon wall are between us: life
And song should away from heart to heart!
I--prison-bird, with a ruddy strife
At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start--

Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing
That's spirit: tho' cloistered fast, soar free;
Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring
Of the rueful neighbours, and--forth to thee!      

                                                                        ~Robert Browning

July 2012:

The Sound of the Sea

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

                                                        

                                                                                  ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

June 2012:

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul. 

                                                ~William Ernest Henley

May 2012:

By the Sea

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven is on the sea: Listen! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder -everlastingly. Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought Thy nature is not therefore less divine: Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not.                  ~William Wordsworth

April 2012:

To Sir John Lade On His Coming of Age 

Long-expected one and twenty

Lingering year at last is flown

Pomp and pleasure, pride and plenty

Great Sir John, are all your own.

Loosened from the minor’s tether,

Free to mortgage or to sell,

Wild as wind, and light as feather,

Bid the slaves of thrift farewell.

Call the Bettys, Kates, and Jennys,

Every name that laughs at care,

Lavish of your grandsire’s guineas,

Show the spirit of an heir.

All that prey on vice and folly

Joy to see their quarry fly,

Here the gamester light and jolly,

There the lender grave and sly.

Wealth, Sir John, was made to wander,

Let it wander as it will;

See the jockey, see the pander,

Bid them come, and take their fill.

When the bonny blade carouses,

Pockets full, and spirits high,

What are acres? What are houses?

Only dirt, or wet or dry.

If the guardian or the mother

Tell the woes of wilful waste,

Scorn their counsel and their pother

You can hang or drown at last.

~Samuel Johnson

March 2012:
A Day Dream

On a sunny brae alone I lay One summer afternoon; It was the marriage-time of May With her young lover, June. From her Mother's heart seemed loath to part That queen of bridal charms, But her Father smiled on the fairest child He ever held in his arms. The trees did wave their plumy crests, The glad birds carolled clear; And I, of all the wedding guests, Was only sullen there. There was not one but wished to shun My aspect void of cheer; The very grey rocks, looking on, Asked, "What do you do here?" And I could utter no reply: In sooth I did not know Why I had brought a clouded eye To greet the general glow. So, resting on a heathy bank, I took my heart to me; And we together sadly sank Into a reverie. We thought, "When winter comes again Where will these bright things be? All vanished, like a vision vain, An unreal mockery! "The birds that now so blithely sing, Through deserts frozen dry, Poor spectres of the perished Spring In famished troops will fly. "And why should we be glad at all? The leaf is hardly green, Before a token of the fall Is on its surface seen." Now whether it were really so I never could be sure-, But as, in fit of peevish woe, I stretched me on the moor, A thousand thousand glancing fires Seemed kindling in the air; A thousand thousand silvery lyres Resounded far and near: Methought the very breath I breathed Was full of sparks divine, And all my heather-couch was wreathed By that celestial shine. And while the wide Earth echoing rang To their strange minstrelsy, The little glittering spirits sang, Or seemed to sing, to me: "0 mortal, mortal, let them die; Let Time and Tears destroy, That we may overflow the sky With universal joy. "Let Grief distract the sufferer's breast, And Night obscure his way; They hasten him to endless rest, And everlasting day. "To Thee the world is like a tomb, A desert's naked shore; To us, in unimagined bloom, It brightens more and more. "And could we lift the veil and give One brief glimpse to thine eye Thou would'st rejoice for those that live, Because they live to die." The music ceased-the noonday Dream Like dream of night withdrew But Fancy still will sometimes deem Her fond creation true.

                                                                                                      By Emily Bronte




February 2012:
To the Virgins to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
   Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
   Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, 
   The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
   And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
   When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
   Times still succeed the former. 

Then be not coy, but use your time,
   And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
   You may forever tarry.

    

  By Robert Herrick